Forms and the Role of Roadside Memorials in the Gdańsk Agglomeration, Poland

Abstract

The paper fills in a gap in the literature on roadside memorials in Poland. The aims of this article are to find a typical form of a roadside memorial in the Gdańsk agglomeration (northern Poland) and to explore the role (function and meaning) of roadside memorials. The results were achieved through the field studies and a survey conducted in 2017. The first part of the article provides a description of investigated remembrance sites, while the other one analyzes the opinions of students of the University of Gdańsk. A typical roadside memorial is a metal, rusty Latin cross, parallel to the road, decorated with artificial roses and accompanied with one burnt out votive candle. Nearly all the students are of the opinion that Poles put up memorial crosses in order to commemorate their family members who died in tragic road accidents. About one third of the respondents believe that memorial crosses serve the purpose of warning other drivers about a dangerous fragment of the road. The survey points to a slightly larger percentage of the religious than the cultural argumentation as regards the choice of the cross instead of other objects to mark accident sites in Poland.